This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which could be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light and not as admissions of prior art.
Business processes within or across an enterprise are often partially or totally automated. This automation can be provided by many different systems from legacy applications, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) system to more modern applications, such as java, web, or workflow applications. Such systems and applications can be heterogeneous, distributed, and independently managed by different entities across the enterprise.
This decentralization and distribution often makes it difficult to get a coherent picture of what processes are actually being performed across the enterprise. For many reasons, however, getting an understanding of what processes are actually performed across the enterprise is advantageous. First, it allows the enterprise to understand its own business operations, which can be helpful to improve those business operations. Second, understanding the processes simplifies the deployment of process monitoring tools. Third, having a process model simplifies fully automating business processes. Conventional process discovery systems are either very simplistic (e.g., they consider only simple cases such as sequential processes or loop-free processes) or limited to considering tasks that are instantaneous.